The Buffalo Bills spent most of the night pushing Pittsburgh around, walking out with a 26–7 win that never really felt in doubt. Buffalo looked locked in from the start, but after a late hit by Patrick Queen on Josh Allen that somehow didn’t draw a flag, you could feel something shift. The Bills’ head coach Sean McDermott said as much afterward.

“It definitely caused a stir in the sideline. That was nose to nose, nobody backing down, we weren’t backing down. We came to play. So you hit our quarterback like that, you’re gonna spark our team a little bit,” the head coach said.

Tempers flared right after the play, and the Bills were stunned when the officials kept the flag in their pocket. According to reporter Sal Capaccio, that moment lit the fuse. Players told him the tone changed right then, tackle Alec Anderson being one of them.

“We try to keep 17 as clean as possible, and then when somebody goes out there and does a cheap shot like that, you know, it kind of wakes everybody up to know, we got to set our jaws and we got to come out here and get ready to swing. It’s gonna be a Mike Tyson fight,” he said.

To be fair, calling it a “cheap shot” ignores the reality of trying to tackle Josh Allen in the open field. It was second-and-3. Allen tucked it, headed right, and went into his usual late slide. Queen arrived a heartbeat after Allen was already on the turf.

When you’re already driving downhill, there’s no way to hit the brakes. It’s the tightrope every defender walks against Allen: he milks the slide, and they get stuck holding the bag. Sometimes the flag comes. This time, it didn’t. But the league office will likely weigh in later this week. A hit like that usually carries a five-figure fine, even when it’s more physics than intent.

Flag or not, the effect was immediate: Buffalo woke up. And once they did, they tore through a reeling Steelers defense, piling up big gains on the ground and closing the night with one of their cleaner offensive performances of the season.

Bills’ offensive fireworks against Pittsburgh

The Bills actually went into halftime down 7–3, but that late hit on Josh Allen seemed to flip a switch. Whatever spark they needed, they found it. What followed was a second half that looked nothing like the first.

Allen punched in his 76th career rushing touchdown, passing Cam Newton for the most ever by a quarterback. He did it behind an offense missing two starting linemen and a couple other regular contributors, which makes what came next even more impressive: 249 rushing yards, the most the Steelers have ever allowed since moving into Acrisure Stadium.

James Cook shook off his early fumble and ran like a man trying to win the game on his own, piling up 144 yards on 32 carries. If the Bills looked like this every week, all the preseason talk about them being real contenders would feel a lot less silly.

The third quarter alone was complete domination: 13–0 on the scoreboard, 134–14 in yardage. By then, Cook was already past 130 yards, and Buffalo had blown past the 200-yard rushing mark as a team. Josh Allen admitted afterward that Queen’s hit may have stirred something in the group.

“Maybe a little bit. Moving forward, probably don’t need that to get us going. This is a really good team that we just played with a fantastic defense, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, on the road, to find a win, it’s what we came to do, and we were fortunate enough to do that,” the quarterback said.

And that’s the part Buffalo needs to hold onto. The energy that came right after. If they can bottle that version of themselves, they might just salvage this thing.